(New York) Uber stock was down sharply on Wall Street on Friday after the chauffeur-driven vehicle (VTC) booking platform reported a “cybersecurity incident” allegedly caused by a young hacker 18 years old, according to New York Times.
Posted at 12:12 p.m.
At around 3:40 p.m. GMT (11:40 a.m. EDT), Uber stock was down 4.63% to $31.59, after dropping as much as 6.79%.
“We are currently dealing with a cybersecurity incident,” the group tweeted Thursday evening, indicating that it was “in contact with the authorities” on this subject.
According to New York Timesan 18-year-old hacker allegedly obtained access codes to Uber’s internal network by posing as a member of the technical team to an employee.
He would then have accessed the intranet, the source code as well as emails, according to the daily, which received screenshots from the hacker in support of his assertions.
Several cybersecurity specialists also said they had been in contact with the one who presented himself as the hacker.
Asked by AFP, Uber referred to Thursday’s tweet, without further details.
The incident comes as the trial of former Uber IT security officer Joe Sullivan is being held this week in San Francisco.
The 50-year-old is accused of having concealed, in 2016, a computer attack which had allowed hackers to get their hands on the personal data of around 57 million users of the platform.
According to the indictment, Joe Sullivan, who was fired in November 2017, also arranged for the payment of a $100,000 ransom to the hackers behind the attack.
The affair had not been revealed until a year later. In 2018, Uber reached an out-of-court settlement with prosecutors in 50 U.S. states that included paying $148 million in compensation, in total, for delaying disclosure of the attack to the regulator as well as the general public.
Identified by US authorities, the two hackers behind the cyberattack were arrested and pleaded guilty to extortion before a federal judge in California in 2019. Their sentence has not yet been pronounced.
The trial of Joe Sullivan is considered a test of the vision that American justice has of the responsibilities and obligations of cybersecurity specialists within companies.